Friday, November 11, 2016

The tools within G Suite for Education are constantly evolving. Sometimes it feels like the updates come in waves like they did this week. These are the latest updates to tools within the G Suite environment.

1. A new version of Google Sites is now available to everyone who has a G Suite for Education or Work account. The caveat being that your domain administrator must enable it. Google teased us with this update back in June and finally rolled it out this week. The new version of Google Sites provides a new drag-and-drop editing platform, enhanced collaboration features, and new responsive design templates. If you have sites made in the current version of Google Sites, don't worry because they're not going away and you don't have to change anything on them until 2018.

2. Android users who have the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps installed will now receive notifications within those apps as well as within in the Google Drive app. (If that sounds like too many notifications for your liking, you can turn them off in your phone's settings).

3. The Gmail and Google Calendar iOS apps were updated this week. The Gmail app will now allow you to use the undo send function just like on a desktop computer. The Calendar app now supports viewing weeks and months in landscape mode. The Calendar app also now supports non-Gregorian calendars.

The new version of Google Sites will be featured in my online course Getting Going With G Suite. The next class starts on November 21st. Graduate credit is available.

HSTRY is a multimedia timeline creation tool that I've been a fan of since it launched a couple of years ago. One of the features that makes it different from other timeline tools is that you can build quiz questions into your timeline. HSTRY also offers a collaboration option for students and teachers to use to create timelines together. In the video embedded below I provide an overview of how to create a multimedia timeline on HSTRY.

Applications for Education
There are two features of HSTRY that make it stand-out from the crowd. First, as a teacher you can create an online classroom in which you can view all of your students' timelines. Second, as a teacher you can build questions into timelines that you share with your students. You can even build-in explanations of the answers to your questions.

Next week is Geography Awareness Week. That is a great time to have your students create their own multimedia maps. Yesterday, I shared five map creation activities that your students can do to increase their understanding of geography. In that post I suggested using Google's My Maps, Scribble Maps, and National Geographic's Map Maker Interactive tool. If you or your students need a tutorial on those tools, take a look at my playlist of tutorials.

Check out my YouTube channel to find more than 400 other educational technology tools tutorial videos.